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Garnet

The name ‘garnet’ actually encompasses an entire family of gemstones, each with different characteristics. The two best-known varieties are pyrope and almandine garnets, both of which are red - slightly orangey red in the case of pyrope, and purplish, wine red for almandine. Both have been historically popular for their rich, saturated colour and excellent durability, and were most famously used in dramatic late 18th century Central European ‘Bohemian’ jewels, which were set exclusively with flat gut garnets in foil-backed settings. Other varieties of garnet include the golden honey-coloured hessonite, and also spessartine or ‘mandarin’ garnets, which are a vivid orange. Even rarer are the green varieties of garnet: demantoid, meaning ‘diamond-like’, first mined in Russia in 1868 and prized for its extraordinary fire, and the more recently discovered tsavorite, displaying a green close to that of emerald, and named after Tsavo national park in Kenya where it was first mined. Both stones are very rare in sizes over a carat, and are highly valued as a result. Garnets in all their varieties are beautiful and often very underrated and affordable stones, showing a wide variety of rich colours, and well suited for everyday wear.